More sad news came today from both north and south as the Canadian Olympic Committee announced it would not send a team to Tokyo this summer, while the last international badminton matches scheduled for April are off as the New Zealand Open has been suspended.

Even before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced any decision on the fate of the schedule for this year’s Olympic Games, Canada has pre-emptively cancelled its athletes’ participation so long as the Games are not delayed until after the Covid-19 pandemic has safely subsided. A press release published yesterday reads:

The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Canadian Paralympic Committee (CPC), backed by their Athletes’ Commissions, National Sports Organizations and the Government of Canada, have made the difficult decision to not send Canadian teams to the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the summer of 2020.

The COC and CPC urgently call on the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to postpone the Games for one year and we offer them our full support in helping navigate all the complexities that rescheduling the Games will bring. While we recognize the inherent complexities around a postponement, nothing is more important than the health and safety of our athletes and the world community.

The Canadian badminton players will be hopeful that Olympics are rescheduled to safety. This would have been the first time in 20 years that Canada had players qualify in all five events.

Meanwhile, the New Zealand Open, which was to have begun on April 28th, has been suspended with no replacement dates announced. The Super 300 event, which kicked off the Tokyo qualifying period to great fanfare last spring, is the second major badminton event scheduled for May to be cancelled in the last few days. On Friday, the Badminton World Federation (BWF) took the decision to rescheduled the biennial Thomas and Uber Cup Finals from May to August this year. Read more on the New Zealand Open website.

About Don Hearn

Don Hearn is an Editor and Correspondent who hails from a badminton-loving town in rural Canada. He joined the Badzine team in 2006 to provide coverage of the Korean badminton scene and is committed to helping Badzine to promote badminton to the place it deserves as a global sport. Contact him at: don @ badzine.net